


At First Sight

by Lirillith



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: F/M, Final Fantasy Kiss Battle, First Meetings, Magic, Magic Meta, Pre-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maduin and Madeline get to know each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> There's some pretty significant futzing with and expansion of the in-game scene here. Inspired by Stealth Noodle's FF Kiss Battle prompt and [this fanart](http://sheeptan.deviantart.com/art/FFVI-Maduin-and-Madeline-204639326).

Madeline Branford had never been good at listening to reasonable advice, like _Don't play in that abandoned house,_ or _If you're going to go wandering around the woods at night at least tell someone where you're going,_ or _For heaven's sake why would you go out for a walk in a storm like this_. It was entirely possible it ran in the family; she was an orphan by the time she turned twelve, and her father, at least, had fallen to his death while out hunting. 

She was usually willing to admit, at least privately, that there was something to the advice she so blithely ignored. The abandoned house wasn't haunted like her friends had thought, except by spiders, but its second story wasn't terribly stable, which was probably what had really worried her father. The woods at night didn't kill her, but they certainly frightened her until the sun rose, and the fact she couldn't find her way home frightened her grandmother. 

The storm, though — she couldn't see how some wind and rain was supposed to harm her, and walking through the storm led her to a fascinating cave, filled with lava and interesting old writings she couldn't read. It looked like the Old Tiransu on some of the ruins up in the mountains, and she made a mental note to come back some time, with a guidebook, and read them, or else make rubbings and bring them home. The lava meant that she didn't feel at all chilled, and her wet clothes kept her from feeling the heat too badly. Perhaps too well, in fact. Her only regret, as she blacked out, was that she hadn't brought along more water; if she had, she might have had enough strength to make it back out again. 

 

Maduin had always been more amenable to ordinary humans than many others of his kind. Part of it, no doubt, was that he resembled them more than did most Espers; perhaps he retained more of a sense of kinship to humans in retaining their form, or perhaps when he encountered them, they treated him more fairly than they did Espers they saw as wholly inhuman. 

So it was no wonder that he was one of those summoned when a human woman was found, unexpectedly, within their gates. He knew how they worked, the others felt; he'd tried to live among them far longer, and more recently, than any other Esper had since the war. They seemed to forget that he had returned because he'd felt, in the end, that the challenge of coexistence between Espers and humans was greater than the reward. He knelt over her, feeling the last of the heavy storm rains soaking his hair. He checked the pulse at her neck — no one else had remembered where to check, they said — and noted her flush and the dryness of her skin. From what he remembered of the cave that guarded the gates, she'd likely overheated. But he saw her eyes move beneath the lids, and then the lids opened. She mumbled something incoherent. Had the humans' languages changed beyond recognition, he wondered? 

"Are you with me?" he asked. 

Her eyes, at least, focused on him, though no sound emerged when her lips moved. There was a lump on her forehead; had she fallen, as well? He was no healer, and there'd be no convincing Kirin or Seraphim to come anywhere near an injured outsider, not while she was too muddled for them to read her intentions. "I'll bring you to shelter," he said. "Try to stay focused. You need to stay conscious if you can." 

"Okay," she agreed, and smiled blearily at him. 

 

He took her to his own home, using his magic to cool her, and Ramuh was the only one who would come near, mostly to implore Maduin to put her out. "She can't be moved," Maduin said. "Think what you wish of her, but she is a living being. She won't live if put outside the gate now." 

"Think what will become of us if she takes word to the outsiders," Ramuh protested. 

"She injured her head. When she returns to her own world, no one will credit what she thinks she saw." 

Ifrit refused to be in the house with her, choosing to stay with Ixion instead, so Maduin settled the woman in Ifrit's bed. He loved his brother, but he saw no need to sleep on the floor while Ifrit's xenophobia left them with a free bed. The only cure for the woman's ailments was time, so that was what he had to give her, despite the complaints of his people. Several villagers visited each day — nearly a dozen the first day alone — to ask him to get rid of her. That was the precise term Golem used, but he'd always been blunt. Most were more euphemistic than that; send her home, or return her to her own world.

For the first day, she drifted in and out of sleep; her eyes would be open when he left her bedside and closed when he returned. On the second, she seemed fully conscious, and sat up to be fed broth, tea, and potions. She still spoke little, however, and he began to worry that she might have sustained serious damage to her faculties, either in the fall or owing to the heat. On the third day, though, he turned from his doorway, from his confrontation with Shiva and Lakshmi, to find her sitting up, and her eyes followed him as he walked into the room with the pot of medicinal tea he'd brewed before he heard the call at his door. 

"Am I causing you trouble?" she asked. Her accent was thick and unfamiliar, but decipherable with care. 

"No," he said, shaking his head in the negative. "The others are simply cautious."

"They were very beautiful," she said. 

He smiled. "They'd both be pleased to hear that." Lakshmi in particular. "Can you tell me your name?"

A faint frown line appeared between her brows, then cleared; she must be having the same minor difficulty with his speech that he had with hers. "Madeline," she said, extending a hand to him in a gesture he couldn't identify. Or perhaps he could. He took her hand in his, turned it over, and placed a kiss on the back, then lifted his eyes to hers; she was smiling at him, her eyes bright. 

 

Madeline had never had any warnings turn out to be so spectacularly right and wrong at the same time. True, exploring the cave had consequences she'd never foreseen, and could well have killed her, but it but the place she'd come to was like nothing she'd ever seen before. Maduin, the man who cared for her, had frightened her at first. Some of his features resembled an animals' — his legs were like a dog's, or possibly a lion's — and others were unearthly, his dark skin a shade she'd never seen on a human. It reminded her of tree bark, more than anything else, but his hands, at least, hadn't been rough to the touch. Perhaps the color just looked odd because his hair was purple all over his body — if the hair on his head and his chest was purple, then so would be any on his arms and legs — and he had horns, but his face was like a human's. A very handsome human's. 

All right, fine, she'd been charmed by his courtly salute the first time they spoke, and she didn't in the least mind that his concern for her health gave her more time to get to know him. His accent was odd — though hers probably sounded just as strange to him — but they were learning to understand each other better every day. He told her about his people, the Espers (she didn't tell him she'd thought they were a myth) and their world, and she told him about the history of the world they'd both left.

When he felt she was strong enough, and she'd felt she'd been strong enough for several days, he took for a short walk outside his house. She wore clothes he'd brought to her, borrowed, he said, from angels; it took her some time to realize he meant a person's name, not literal angels. Anything could be true here, though the grass and trees seemed very ordinary. "You'll be wanting to return soon," he said. 

"I suppose." Her little village didn't really have much calling her back. Her grandmother had passed the year before. She still lived in the old woman's house, and worked in a blacksmith's shop — minding the till and so on — owned by the son of one of her grandmother's friends. The blacksmith's strapping son had been eyeing her with interest of late, and she'd been eyeing back, albeit partly out of boredom, but it wasn't as though they had an understanding. 

"No?" Maduin extended a hand to help her up a steeper stretch of the path, and she accepted it with more gratitude than she liked to show; she didn't like feeling helpless. His fingertips ended in claws, but he'd never scratched her. 

"If my life were so exciting, I wouldn't be crawling on suspension bridges over lava, would I?"

"Is that what the cave is like? It's been some time." 

On a level with him, she didn't let go of his hand right away. "Sorry," she said. "I've been curious about your— your hands." She didn't want to say claws; she didn't know what might and might not offend him. He let her turn his hand over. 

"They're a bit like a dog's claws," he said, apparently noticing her attention to the tips of his fingers. "Not sharp. Not like a cat's."

"There are no animals here!" she exclaimed. "I knew it was quiet, but I never really placed it."

He nodded. "We took only what we needed when we made this land for ourselves."

"So the food, the drink — I haven't seen gardens, either." 

"No, we have those," he said with a laugh. "You haven't been very far. We have water, as well, and fish. How do I describe this? Most of us, maybe all, were humans once. Magic changed us — we've studied it, and our conclusion has been that the changes were in accordance with each one's true nature. But some of us took on shapes very different from human forms, and to a certain extent, our natures reflect that. The woman who became like a lioness feels the urge to hunt, and to be around the rest of her pride. When she sees her friend who became a bird, she has the impulse to pounce. She ignores it, the way anyone ignores certain impulses in the name of good manners, but if she spends more time around other lions, it becomes more difficult."

"So you don't want a pack of dogs, for a dog or wolf-person to join," she said. "Or you don't want... Do mice go in packs? You don't want anyone thinking of themselves as prey, either."

"We have no mouse, but you have the idea, I think," he said. "It's easier if it's all our own kind here. And if our predators don't get used to the taste of bird flesh, or beef." 

Madeline shivered. "It disturbs you?" he asked.

"A little. I guess you get used to it?"

"You do. Does it disturb you to know that most of my kind believe you to be a more dangerous predator yet?"

It didn't disturb her, but it did puzzle her. "Me? Why?"

"We have only talked about history _since_ the War of the Magi," he said. "No doubt you know the human's history of the war. Ours is different." 

He looked somber. Humans hadn't treated Espers well, Madeline realized; in her own half-remembered history lessons, mythical beasts — espers — were unleashed like weapons. They devastated cities, broke sieges, and then you didn't hear about them again; the teachers just wanted to say "this might have been a volcanic eruption," though Maduin had mentioned that Ifrit was his brother. "Tell me," she said. "I want to know."

 

When he spoke to Madeline, Maduin was reminded of the years that he'd tried to live among humans. They might not take the forms of birds and beasts, but they held so much variety in other ways, so much potential. Their range of cultures, of languages and goods and food, were like nothing in the Esper world. When he described the life the Espers had chosen to Madeline, he emphasized the virtues of such simplicity, but he found himself thinking, regretfully, of the sacrifices. Espers could live in harmony because they were all, in many ways, the same, united by their commonalities. Humans had never been able to, and by the history Madeline had recounted, that had not changed in the centuries since he walked among them. He might long for the taste of curry, on occasion, but it was a small sacrifice to make for a land without war. 

"Probably so," Madeline agreed, when he admitted as much. "People in the village liked to talk about the king — he's styling himself emperor now — and how he's defending our ancient claims. _Ours,_ hah. More like _his._ It's all greed and war. How do they think people feel when they suddenly stop being from the kingdom of Albrook and now they're from the kingdom of Vector?"

"Espers aren't entirely peaceful," Maduin said, feeling the need to balance her vehemence. "People here argue and squabble as well."

"That'd happen no matter what," she said. "People are people, right?"

"You think of us as people?" he asked, genuinely curious. Few humans he'd encountered had. 

"Of course! How else would I think of you?"

She hadn't met everyone, he thought. It was easier for a human to think so of Shiva and Ifrit. He needed to introduce her to those who no longer wore any trace of human form, to Ixion, or Bismarck. 

He needed to return her to her own people, he corrected himself. No one here was easy with her presence, and while he enjoyed speaking to her, and in some way seeing his own world through an outsider's eyes, he knew it was better for everyone if she returned home. Her life in her own world would be calling her back soon, if it wasn't already. She had been in their world for a week, as they reckoned time, though the days were a few hours longer here. That was more than long enough for her friends and family to grow worried, or if they'd known the danger of the place she'd gone, frantic. And she would eventually tire of the simplicity of life here, the boundaries within which they operated. She was so alive, so adventurous; a quiet world like this held little for her once the novelty had palled. 

"It's true, though," he said. "We've managed to maintain peace here for centuries. There are disagreements, yes, but no permanent rifts." 

"In a small town..." She smiled slightly. "That's more than humans can say."

"Is it?" 

"Oh, definitely. Where I'm from — I told you I worked at the blacksmith's, right? Well, there are actually two, because the man I work for doesn't speak to his brother-in-law, who used to be a fellow apprentice and then married Mr. Bonheur's sister. They haven't spoken for twenty years. And people took sides, so some of them go to the smith I work for and some go to his brother-in-law. There's just barely enough business for two."

"Twenty years is not so long, for us, but to you..."

"I mean, I'm only twenty-four." She sat down on a rock. "How old are you?"

He thought about it. "Time moves differently here," he said. "I remember the War of the Magi." Her eyes widened, and with a haste he didn't care to examine, he added, "I was just a child then. The magic spread to my brother and I from our father — the warriors called him the Titan. He perished during the war. We believe that's the reason we look so similar even as Espers, because it followed the same lines as any family resemblance."

"So you're a thousand years old?"

"Is that how long it's been?"

"Nearly."

"But that's precisely the point. We came here as children. I was fifteen when I left this world to try to live among humans... and at that point humans said the war had been four hundred years before." 

"Wait... fifteen years? Counting time the way we've been here, day by day, not just 'about the same as a fifteen-year-old human'?" She sounded frightened. "How many years have passed outside while I've been here?"

It was hard not to let her fear infect him. "Likely only a week or two."

"But how?"

"Time is _different_ here. Not slower or faster. It's shaped by our wills, to an extent. This week has been longer than many I can remember, because—" Because each day felt so full, spending time with her, yet at the same time, the days flew past. "Your presence here changes the flow of time as well, I believe. It feels so to me. There are others I could ask better attuned to it." 

"You think so?" He nodded. "But if that's true, what does that do to everyone else here? Will I grow old over the course of a few months here? Will human time catch up with all of you?"

"I don't know." He should ask. Golem might know, or Quetzalli. They were both closely attuned to time. "Don't worry too much. Once we return to the house, I'll go seek out some of the others who can tell me more. A few hours won't do any more harm."

Madeline nodded, looking subdued. "I hope I haven't caused any harm," she said. "Or spent so much time here everyone back home will think I'm dead."

"Even if something's gone wrong, don't blame yourself," he said. "You were certainly in no shape to leave at first. And no other human has ever come here before. None of us know how that will affect life here." 

"I suppose." She took his hand and let him help her up, however. "What was it like, when you went to live among the humans?"

" _Among_ might be a poor choice of words," he admitted. "I built myself a shelter in the forest near a human settlement..." He'd meant only to observe, at first, but there'd been a lost child in the woods — far easier for Maduin to find than for any human search party, once it grew dark — and so he'd become known to them. Predictably enough, some had considered him an angel and some a demon; also predictably, the former had held sway not long after he'd delivered a little boy, frightened but unhurt, into his mother's arms, and the latter had grown louder the next year when a pox sickened first the cows and then the villagers. The tale carried them all the way back home, though. To Maduin, the stories of his life with the humans were fresher than his memories of the week before last, the week before Madeline had arrived, and he had little cause to relive them. None of his own kind cared to hear more about humans. "When I came back, the elders all said that was the way of things," he concluded, as they neared his own front gate. "That was the reason we came here in the first place. Humans couldn't see us as anything other than supernatural."

"Even though you'd been humans once?"

"But we'd been touched by the gods. We weren't normal any longer. We were either prophets or weapons. Gods don't just leave people alone, do they?"

"I suppose that's true. Or if they do, it doesn't make for much of a story, so no one remembers." 

"Also possible," he admitted, with a smile. "Would you like more tea?"

"You're going to drown me in tea," she teased. "I think you just like showing off how quickly you can heat the kettle."

He stayed silent on that topic. It was childish, but he did enjoy being able to impress someone with his magic. In the human world, he never dared to use it, and here, of course, it was routine. As he prepared the things for tea, though, she seemed to grow thoughtful. "So you don't think humans and Espers can really coexist?"

"Long-term... I don't know." He kept his focus on the tea leaves, tracking a few scraps of dried tea that had escaped the strainer. "It's always been a matter of Espers in the world of humans." But now that she was conscious, no one would even come near his house, which didn't speak well of the prospects for a human in the world of Espers. He'd been thinking, idly, of a tactful way to leave her alone while he sought out Quetzalli. 

"I should leave soon," she said. "You told me people here are frightened of me. Why should they have to get over that just because I waltzed in and decided I liked it here? It's their home, not mine."

_You like it here?_ he wanted to ask. But it was best that she return home. "Someone can guide you through the gate whenever you like," he said. "It might be your only chance to meet another Esper."

"Don't you think they'd rather keep away from me? Or is it worth risking my terrifying presence just to get me out of town?"

Perhaps he should have offered to guide her himself, he thought. But he didn't want to see her leave, even if he knew she should. "I should go ask one of my friends about the flow of time," he said. "For everyone's peace of mind." She looked not just thoughtful, but sad, and he hesitated, but all she said was, "But your tea?"

"It shouldn't take me long."

 

It was evening by the time Maduin returned, and his tea had long since grown cold, not that he seemed to care. Madeline met him at the door, feeling a bit too much like an eager puppy as she did so, but she'd been bored; the books he owned were all written in an elaborate script she _thought_ might be old Tiransu, though it didn't look like the kind they used for inscriptions. As he lit the lamps, he reassured that time in the Esper world seemed closely anchored to the human world for now. "Am I the one anchoring it?" she asked.

"Most likely," he said. She imagined herself walking back out into her own world, marrying Alan, and growing into an old lady, while a month passed here. Or staying here, gradually working her anchor free of the human world, and walking back into it a few years later to see how things had gone over the centuries. 

"Who should I ask to guide me?" she asked him, as he prepared a meal for both of them. "Just... whoever's around?"

"Ifrit is usually an early riser, and he can help you with the obstacles of the cave," Maduin said. Somewhat unexpectedly, he left the cutting board and wiped off his hands, then came over to her, lifting the pendant that had hung around his neck. She'd seen it many times, and wondered what it was, but he'd never explained. Seeing what he meant to do, she lowered her head. 

"You never told me what this is," she said, as she felt the weight of the chain, still warmed by his body, settle around her neck. The pendant itself was a simple stone, a smooth, milky, mostly-opaque green that reminded her of jade more than anything. 

"It's a memento of our world for you," he said. "A talisman to keep you safe on your journey home."

"Is that what it was before?" she asked, but he just smiled and returned to chopping vegetables. A week ago, this had looked incongruous — a supernatural creature, a tall, shirtless, horned man who looked like he was carved of brown marble and fuzzed with violet moss, chopping up onions in a kitchen — but now it just felt familiar and domestic. She knew perfectly well it wasn't just the onions making her eyes sting, but that was the very reason she should go. If humans and Espers had such difficulties coexisting, there was no point to hanging around, getting more attached, waiting to be confronted by the inevitable; waiting to slip her anchor only to find she couldn't live with these people after all. She should go back now, and be satisfied that she'd had an experience that no one else in her world could boast. 

So she went to bed early, and spent a sleepless night looking around a room lit by the strange twilight they had here; it wasn't moonlight, though they'd tried to approximate it. Finally, as the sky began lightening for their pseudo-dawn, she rose and dressed in her own clothes again, washed her face in the pure and icy-cold water that filled the basin automatically whenever she needed it, and slipped as silently as she could out of Maduin's front door. 

The village felt like any village did this early in the morning; anyone who was awake was about their own business. Bakers would be baking, farmers tending their livestock — well, no livestock here — early risers in their own homes would be tending to food or fires or chores left unfinished the night before. Things would be starting soon, but they hadn't yet. There was no one around to ask as a guide, and the truth was, she didn't really want one. She didn't want to seek help from someone who didn't want her here in the first place, and she didn't want her last memory of this place to be anyone other than Maduin. 

Madeline started up the path on her own her own. Maduin had never led her this way, but it was impossible to miss the mountain; that had to be the way out. The incline was gentle at first, but gradually grew more pronounced, and she was grateful for it. Having to throw all of herself into the climb meant she wasn't caught up in her thoughts. She wasn't entertaining second thoughts or regrets, and if she wished, occasionally, that she'd at least said goodbye to him, the distance she'd already traveled was a strong argument against turning back to remedy that. _Don't look back,_ she told herself, the mantra that pushed her up the steepest parts, but when she reached the plateau it was only reasonable to stop and catch her breath.

The Esper world spread out before her like a tapestry, or maybe more like a patchwork quilt; vegetable gardens, herb gardens, pasture — sheep, of course, they had to have cloth, though she wondered how that worked for their wolves and the like — and houses. Trees, like punctuation marks, or bits of embroidery on squares of the quilt. A stream. She wondered if it flowed in from her own world, or if it came from magic somehow. She wanted to know so much more, about magic itself and how it worked, how they'd made this world of theirs, how the others lived. How and when others had tried to live with humans, what it had been like; what the others were like, because she'd only seen a few of them, and only in glimpses. She didn't want to go back to the blacksmith shop and her grandma's house and listening to people at the shop and the pub and the market talk about the king-emperor and his war and who'd been arguing with who in the village, who'd had an affair, who'd lost money and who'd cheated who. The buzz of anger and emotion in crowds, the tensions, the awkwardness, the way people looked at each other; maybe it was just that she'd met so few Espers, but all she felt from Maduin, all she felt here in general, was peace. 

She got up to investigate the next step along the trail. A cave — a very dark cave, which might mean it was magical, because the opening was quite large — with a suspension bridge leading through the void. She went back to the rock she'd found. There'd be plenty of time for that soon enough. She wanted to be sure she was steady before she tried that. It was one thing to try all manner of risks while exploring, but doing the same just to return to boring old routine was something else again. 

She wasn't sure how long she sat, or when the sound had started, but when she realized she was hearing it — breathing, and the scraping of rocks — she realized she'd been hearing it for a while. Someone else climbing up here? She wasn't in such a hurry to return to her own world that she couldn't wait to see who was coming this way. 

And she wasn't so dim as to be very surprised when Maduin's was the head that emerged at the top of the trail. Though she couldn't fault him for looking surprised at the sight of her, resting calmly on a large rock while he labored up the trail. He pulled himself up the rest of the way, and stood before her, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath even as he said, "If you don't want to go back, you can stay here." 

Madeline stood up. "But you said Espers and humans can't coexist," she said, teasing a little, as she walked towards him. He straightened up, which altered her plans just a little. She had to get up on tiptoes to kiss him.

"How do we know for sure?" he asked, reaching out to touch her face, very lightly, with one clawed hand. "Unless we try for ourselves?"

"There's only one way to find out," she agreed. About many things. For instance, how to kiss a man deeply when he had fangs.


End file.
